Immigration Builds a Nation: The Hybrid Impact of European Immigration on the Development of an Advertising Industry

Abstract

This research focuses on the nascent advertising industry in British Mandatory Palestine and how it was influenced and transformed by German Jewish immigrants, who arrived between 1933 and 1939, in a wave of immigration known as the Fifth Aliyah. At the time, local advertising was rather small and undeveloped until the mass wave of immigrants (over 200,000), many highly skilled and educated, came from Central Europe, mainly from Germany. These immigrants played a vital role in the local advertising industry. Their contributions were evaluated using a theoretical model consisting of primary analytical factors—mass communication, economy, technology, society, and international transfer. These factors influenced and continue to influence the form of Israeli advertising industry to this day. German immigration demonstrates a hybrid set of influences that played an instrumental role in the development of the local advertising industry in the Land of Israel. Functional-rational and creative aspects in the advertising industry were radically transformed by these new arrivals. Rethinking media history and centering the immigrant’s unique contribution is an important scholarly objective. This is achieved by shifting the discussion from dominant institutions to the local advertising history and focusing on the functional practices and creative methods imported by immigrants.

Keywords

advertising immigration advertising industry advertising evolution Fifth Aliyah

Introduction

Scholarly focus on local traditions and histories of advertising represents a robust research field. However, the evolution of the advertising industry in Israel has yet to receive adequate research attention. As of now, no comprehensive study exists that has recapped the development of Israel’s advertising industry. Moreover, it should be noted that Israel is considered an immigrant society. As such, highlighting the contribution of immigrants to shaping the advertising industry is desirable.

This research aims to fill these gaps and evaluates the influence of German immigration on the advertising industry in Mandatory Palestine (or what can also be designated the Land of Israel). It employs a theoretical model assessing the impact of German immigrants (or Yekkes, a term referring to Jews of German origin) on Israel’s advertising industry. It should also be noted that the influence of this group extended well beyond the boundaries of the advertising industry.

By deepening and extending academic insights into the Fifth Aliyah (or Jewish wave of immigration to Israel), this research contributes to examining processes, on the micro and macro levels, which influence the development of the advertising industry. In fact, the Fifth Aliyah is sometimes referred to as the Admen’s immigration, emphasizing its significant role in shaping the industry.

Literature Review

Advertising History

The history of advertising is not a new domain of academic inquiry. Works such as Henry Sampson’s A History of Advertising From the Earliest Times (1874) and Frank Presbrey’s The History and Development of Advertising (1929) testify to a long-standing and vigorous historical interest in advertising even in its premodern incarnations (Roth-Cohen & Magen, 2017).

Predictably, American advertising history and its evolution have attracted extensive research attention (see Cruikshank & Schultz, 2010; Fox, 1984; Kumar & Gupta, 2016; Lears, 1995; McGovern, 2006; Miracle, 1977; Sivulka, 2011; Tungate, 2007). One of its defining characteristics is how American advertising is ingrained in American everyday life, not only as a thoroughly integrated tool of industrial capitalism but also as a widely accepted cultural influence (McGovern, 2006). These two aspects form the two dominant trends in American advertising history research. For example, Merlo (2007) looked at American advertising history as a representation of the American Dream. Consumerism may be interpreted as representative of desire, and this desire parallels the abstract idea of the American Dream. As Merlo observed, “this multifaceted notion of the American Dream is demonstrated through advertising. . . .The progression and eventual regression of the populist versus elitist American dream throughout a lifetime is exemplified through advertising” (p. 205). Cohen (2003, 2004) defined the American mass consumer economy as a Consumer’s Republic, emphasizing the growing centrality of mass consumption for the American economy, polity, culture, and social landscape from the 1920s through to the present. Ewen (2001) also pointed out the primary role of the machinery of capitalist production. He portrayed modern advertising as a direct response to the needs of industrial capitalism. Advertising can be perceived as an educator of the consumer. When buying a product, the consumer experiences a self-conscious perspective that was previously socially and psychologically denied. In this perspective, the consumer can ameliorate social and personal frustrations through access to the marketplace. Nevertheless, over time many different messaging strategies have been used to persuade the consumer. Marchand’s (1985) historical research focused on message conveyance to the consumer. He saw advertising as a tool to understand social realities while focusing on elaborate advertising narratives. Advertisements do not simply reflect American myths—they create them. Marchand also noted that advertising themes and motifs have stayed consistent over the years.

Studies on advertising history in different countries and continents are increasingly common, including Australia (Crawford, 2008), Canada (Johnston, 2012), Ireland (Oram, 1986), Germany (Swett, Wiesen, & Zatlin, 2007), Africa, Asia, and South America (Alozie, 2011). These works show that a combination of shaping forces influence advertising as an industry. Only by appreciating all the different factors can one understand the entire picture.

As noted, although considerable literature on advertising history exists, research on the advertising industry in Israel has yet to be comprehensively undertaken. In this study, the history of media is reconceptualized through the immigrant’s unique immersion in local society, focusing on the evolution of the advertising industry in the Land of Israel.

Advertising and Social Values

The various creative messaging strategies and execution tactics used in advertising are important research areas. Researchers have investigated different theories on how advertising works (see Eisend, 2010; Sasser & Koslow, 2008; Smith & Yang, 2004; Yoon & Kim, 2014), particularly those related to different modes used by consumers to process and evaluate advertising (Hartnett, Kennedy, Sharp, & Greenacre, 2016).

One of the main approaches is advertising message appeal. This refers to the method chosen to convey the message to the consumer. It can be divided into two major categories: (1) the rational-functional appeal and (2) the emotional appeal (Lwin & Phau, 2012). The first is also known as the “hard sell” and is based on performance, features, logical facts, and claims (Cutler, Thomas, & Rao, 2000). It combines a large amount of textual and visual information describing the qualities of the product and its characteristics. As a result, an ad using this approach is also called an informative advertisement (Okazaki, Mueller, & Taylor, 2010).

Conversely, an emotional message appeal, also known as the “soft sell,” is based on the premise that optimal arousal of consumer interest is by means of a message involving experiences, emotional satisfaction, and stimuli. Advertisements having an emotional message appeal will focus on creating an associative system linked with buying or using the product or brand aimed at fulfilling the psychological, social, or symbolic needs of the targeted audience (Loewenstein & Lerner, 2003). At the same time, it will minimize the amount of information about the advertised product (Kotler & Armstrong, 2008). Ads adopting this approach are known as emotional or transformational ads.

Advertisements produce values and norms that then influence various cultural patterns (First & Avraham, 2009; Hetsroni, 2012). To achieve effective communication, advertising is largely dependent on shared values and images as well as symbols and signs to convey meaning. The complex relations between advertising and society are illustrated by different approaches toward the role of advertising. Pollay and Gallagher (1990) referred to advertising as a “distorted mirror” because of its selective nature, reflecting only certain aspects of life, while Jhally (1987) argued that advertising does not create values and attitudes, but rather reflects the collective dreams of consumers in each society.

Language Choice in Advertising

One advertising tactic to achieve consumer attention is to vary the language based on target audience norms and habits. Including a foreign language in advertisements is a well-known tactic that helps to generate a multinational brand image (Bishop & Peterson, 2015). Advertisements that include two or more languages are referred to as code-switched advertisements (Lin & Wang, 2016). Use of an additional language may enhance brand and product appeal, thereby increasing perceived quality and social status. By doing so, the ad is perceived as incorporating the values of two cultures into a bicultural consumer identity. Studies have identified that several variables, including text-picture congruity, language attitude, and brand origin, moderate the effects of code-switching in advertising persuasion (Luna & Peracchio, 2001, 2005).

Although the Land of Israel during Mandatory Palestine was an emerging and developing economy, it had a significant multilingual population, immigrants from various linguistic regions, among them Central Europe.

Methodology

As noted, this research focuses of the Fifth Aliyah’s (1933–1939) contribution to the evolution of the advertising industry in the land of Israel. The Fifth Aliyah’s (Aliyah is the Hebrew term for mass wave of immigrants) contribution to Jewish society and culture has been the subject of several scholarly studies. Likewise, the content and impact of advertising in Israeli media has also received research attention. The unique contribution of this study, however, is in its integration of these two research domains. This is accomplished by using a theoretical model (Model 1) for analyzing the various factors and aspects of the Fifth Aliyah that form structural and functional influences on the advertising industry.

Model 1.

Processes and factors influencing advertising industry evolution.

This theoretical model is based on Israeli advertising historiography, drawing on over approximately 150 years of history—from prestate Zionist community to modern State of Israel and through to the present. The integrative model identifies and characterizes factors and processes that played a fundamental role in shaping the Israeli advertising industry. Its timeline encompasses the industry’s beginnings from the first newspaper ad in the Land of Israel in 1863 until the current age (Roth-Cohen & Limor, 2017).

This analysis also overviews different mass communication, economic, social, technological, and international transfer factors and processes that represent universal influences on the development of advertising. Importantly, the weight of each of these elements varies. For example, the mass media landscape emerged as an influential force due to the advertising industry’s development (e.g., introduction of commercial radio, television, and social networks). In other periods, however, international transfer may carry more weight, whether politically (e.g., peace agreements), militarily (e.g., wars), or financially (e.g., international corporations and advertising firms entering the Israeli market). Technology during certain periods impacted development of the local advertising industry (e.g., mobile devices, smart TV, and pay per view) most strongly. In yet other periods, various economic changes exerted the most influence (e.g., economic downturns or robust financial markets; Roth-Cohen & Limor, 2018). This model is based on historiographic identification of associated patterns of data points, and not mere recitation of exhaustive lists of facts.

In an earlier study (Roth-Cohen & Limor, 2018), the history of advertising in the Land of Israel was divided into four chronological time periods. In the second period, the early stages of professional advertising in the Land of Israel are described, referred to as Advertising is Growing Up (1922–1960). One of its key milestones is the radical change in the advertising industry caused by the Fifth Aliyah, an area meriting further investigation.

This framework can be described as a metamodel and is applicable to advertising industry development in virtually any society and country. However, herein, it will be limited to focus on the Fifth Aliyah’s influences on the local advertising industry in the Land of Israel.

As can be seen, the model consists of universal key factors impacting the development of advertising industries. These consist of mass communication (e.g., mass forms of communication channels conveying the advertisements to the target audience), economy (e.g., national expenditure on advertising), society (e.g., social-cultural contexts such as demographic changes due to immigration, tension in values between collectivist and individualist ideals), technology, and international transfer. The implications can be examined across six dimensions whose relationship with each other is interactive. The six dimensions are divided into two groups. The first is the intraindustrial (micro) group, made up of four dimensions: professionalization, specialty versus generality, adoption of new techniques and work patterns, and ownership of ad agencies. The second is the extrandustrial (macro) group, including two dimensions: adman-advertiser relationship and adman-media relationship (Roth-Cohen & Limor, 2018).

This research is based on a qualitative comparative analysis method. The collection of the data was carried out using two methods: documentation and document overview, followed by in-depth interviews (Richards, 2009).

Documentation and document overview—Data were retrieved from professional journals, newspaper items, letters from private archives, and other offline and online texts as well as Israel’s advertising union, the central Zionist archive, and the city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa archives. Documents were also gathered from the offices of various ad agencies.

Because only a small amount of documentation exists, as well as for triangulation, in-depth interviews were conducted.

2. In-depth interviews—Interviews with 30 past and present senior industry executives were held, including ad agency owners, ad agency CEOs, and senior creative executives. Respondents fall into one of the following three categories: (1) central veterans of the field; (2) family members of the local ad agency’s founding fathers; and (3) former owners and senior executives at various ad agencies. Interviews were conducted using the “open interview” method, which resembles a conversation (Shkedi, 2003). The in-depth interviews elicit cultural contexts of human behavior and various media, economic, social, technological as well as global elements and processes. It also reveals how they influenced the development of Israel’s advertising industry (see Model 1). The interviews were conducted face-to-face and were usually held either at the subject’s office or private home. All interviews lasted between 2 and 3 hours and were fully documented.

The Fifth Aliyah (1933–1939)—Background and Profile

The Fifth Aliyah is closely identified with its German element and is also known as the German or Yekkes Aliyah. Even so, only 18% of the 200,000 new immigrants were German (Gelber, 1990; Halamish, 1993).

The Nazi rise to power in 1933 proved a major catalyst for the German Jewish decision to escape their native land and emigrate. Owing to severe immigration restrictions in effect at the time in the United States, Canada, and Argentina, many Jews promptly chose British Mandate-ruled Palestine as a destination. Two standout characteristics emerge, which set those German Jews apart from other contemporaneous immigrants of other countries who had come to the Land of Israel, whether during the Fifth Aliyah or earlier. The German-Jewish immigrants, contrary to previous immigration waves, were not quickly assimilated. They continued to speak German, published German-language newspapers, and their community became the epicenter of many cultural and social activities, which, at the time, were considered highly unorthodox by local Jews (Ashkenazi, 2013; Meron, 2004; Sela-Sheffy, 2006).

Another distinguishing characteristic was that among German Jewish immigrants were thousands of professionals and artists, many of whom had higher educations and arrived with formidable professional experience (Gelber, 1990). A great number of the German immigrants nevertheless struggled to find work in their craft of origin and had to retrain in various other trades, advertising included (Sela-Sheffy, 2006). Some admen and graphic designers did go on to find their footing in the local, budding advertising industry. They proceeded to lay down, as the following will illustrate, brand new foundations for the industry, making a huge impact on its shaping and development for many years to come.

These advertising professionals, who brought their existing knowledge to the emerging nation-state, were trained by the German advertising industry. In the 1920s, Germany stood at the forefront of world advertising culture. Historically, Germany was the homeland of Gutenberg’s print revolution. It was still the leader in the typographic arts, lithography, and packaging design as well as use of vibrant color in advertisements (De Gracia, 2007). Even so, the United States was an increasingly powerful force driving the internationalization of advertising (Ross, 2008). The adoption of American-style advertising—agency structure, work process, use of visual images, consumerist culture ideas—signaled a change in German advertising hegemony. Moreover, American values symbolized “democratization of consumption.” American mass consumption and marketing were adopted in interwar Germany, and the German people were keen to embrace consumerism as packaged by German advertisers (e.g., branded products, personalized focus, and emotional-psychological approaches; Ross, 2007).

Contributions of the Fifth Aliyah to the Evolution of the Advertising Industry in the Land of Israel

Based on the key factors presented in Model 1, various implications of the Fifth immigration were identified and examined across the given dimensions. As noted, these factors consisted of mass communication (e.g., mass forms of communication channels conveying the advertisements to the target audience), economy (e.g., national expenditure on advertising), society (e.g., social-cultural contexts such as demographic changes due to immigration and tension in values between collectivist and individualist ideals), technology, and international transfer. They served as the base for a systematic observation of local advertising growth in the Israeli case. This resulted in the tracing of unique global hybrid influences.

Society

Social conditions played an instrumental role in the development of the advertising industry. In demographic shifts during the Fifth Aliyah (1933–1939), scores of Western European admen arrived in the Land of Israel, along with graphic designers and other professional tradesmen with crafts closely related to the advertising industry. These immigrants made foundational contributions to the development of a modern, advertising industry. They provided comprehensive professional services to advertisers, that is, offering copywriting and design services, media planning, and buying. This was opposed to earlier work patterns in which the advertising agent served as the “middle man” between the newspaper publication and would-be advertisers, representing the media and not the advertiser. Among them were Uli Kaufmann, owner of the O.K. ad agency, who was called the “first lady” of the Israeli advertising industry; brothers Gabriel and Maxim Schamir; Franz Krauss; Otte Wallish; and Rudy Deutsch. They were all disciples of the school of German design.

At the beginning of the 1930s, roughly 15 ad agencies were operating in Tel Aviv. By the time the decade ended, the number had increased to 25 (Helman, 2007). The agency names reflected the new era in local advertising: Cosmos Advertising, New Advertising, and Modern Advertising expressed the contemporary and consciously modern nature of the advertising business. These ad agencies followed the same work patterns imported by their founders from their countries of origin. In fact, this can be said to mark the first and earliest influence of any form of international transfer on the local advertising industry. As Kaufmann (personal communication, January 22, 2009) put it, “only after the Yekkes started their advertising agencies, established work patterns were implemented in the advertising process, graphic designers joined the agencies, and the advertisements’ creative look became polished.” The advertisement was nicknamed “R'eclame” (Helman, 2007; Temkin, 1947) and embodied modern consumer culture values alongside those of the more established pioneering Jewish settlers.

Ad agency ownership (see diagram of Model 1) represented an influential internal dimension affecting the advertising industry. In this early period, small ad agencies proliferated. The “beating heart” of the agency was the owner, who was in charge of three fundamentally different positions: budgeting, copywriting, and accounting (Hetsroni, 2011). It should be borne in mind that the majority of ad agency owners could not draw or illustrate, and the services of graphic designers were thus required. Therefore, agencies began to grow and were now staffed by two primary position holders: the adman (in charge of everything but design) and the graphic designer. Agencies, therefore, had to expand, resulting in an institutionalized division of roles between admen responsible for various aspects of the advertising work itself and graphic designers exclusively in charge of design aspects.

In the words of the legendary Shmuel Warshavsky (personal communication, June, 21, 2010), the first Israeli adman to sign an affiliation agreement with a worldwide advertising agency (i.e., now the Grey Global Group): “The fifth Aliyah immigrants established solid foundations of a modern advertising industry.”

Another influential factor was professionalization (see Model 1). That is, with the establishment of a professional association, member welfare could be looked after, an ethical code enforced, and social recognition in the form of a guaranteed licensing procedure introduced. Indeed, its first indicators could be discerned in the 1930s with the creation of three professional unions (Temkin, 1947, p. 168). These were the Eretz Israel Advertising Union (members were admen and their employees), the Hebrew Artists’ Union for Practical Graphics Art in Eretz Israel, and the Eretz Israel Hebrew Set Designers’ Union (for shop display window designers). In addition, the Israeli Advertising Community was founded in 1935, a forerunner of the Advertisers’ Union (established in 1961 and renamed the Israeli Marketing Union in 2008).

However, these unions had only little impact on the advertising industry, and most were dissolved. As for the Israeli Advertising Community, it lacked significant power and was heavily influenced by the Advertisers’ Union, which enforced conditions in the advertising agencies (e.g., regularized fees, contract details, etc.). Its power also diminished over time, and it was only at the beginning of the 21st century that the Advertisers’ Union regained its influence as a professional association taking care of employee interests.

Moreover, the new German immigrants brought with them an assortment of cultural and consumerist norms, celebrating bourgeois lifestyles and a self-conscious perspective. This led to the creation of ads promoting modern individual liberalism in which the consumer’s own interests, health, beauty, fitness, and leisure were dominant. These advertisements carrying emotional message appeal aimed at fulfilling a symbolic need of the target audience, illustrating the immigrant’s cultural habits from his homeland and giving him a sense of belonging.

Numerous advertisements were dedicated to fashion, expressing the significance of a stylish look. Many included the expression “Made abroad” which was prominently featured (Helman, 2007). Thus, the immigrant did not replace European fashion with a local one, even though differences in climate made this a bit difficult. For example, the Israeli settler wore sandals, while the German immigrant preferred leather shoes—the compromise adopted by the Yekkes was to wear sandals with socks (Example 1). Moreover, an elegant jacket was replaced with a buttoned shirt and formal family dinners with light casual meals.

These lifestyle values were accompanied by championing technological and cultural advances. The German community encouraged abundance and consumption as ideals (Helman, 2007, pp. 134–135). At the time, these values stood in stark contrast to dominant Zionist ideals, emphasizing values of collectivism, pioneering, and settlement of the Land. According to Carmel (2012), “advertisements can be authentic mirrors of a contemporary Zeitgeist” (p. 10). Indeed, advertisements in the 1930s can be divided between two dominant social and cultural mindsets—collectivist and individualist (Examples 2 to 4). As Helman observed, these ads transitioned the population from “official ideology of workers’ solidarity to consumer society’s conspicuous consumption; equality made way for eye-gauging envy as the leading value to be had” (Helman, 2007, p. 129).

Example 1: The adoption of a new identity in the new country was accompanied with pride in the immigrant’s European origin. This ad presenting a tailored look signifies the important role of elegant fashion for the Yekkes. A refined appearance stood in contradiction to the difficult conditions in the new land. (Sabre Deutsch—Das Lexikon der Jeckes, p. 36).

Example 2: This ad for a special gentle soap illustrates modern lifestyle values such as beauty and emphasizes European ideals of self-care and indulgence. These values contradict collectivist themes of building the new land with hard work. (Doar Hayom, January 23, 1936, p. 6).

Example 3: This ad for the popular “food beverage” represents modern individual liberalism by promoting good health through natural ingredients. This ad focuses on self-care and ignores the ideology of building the new land. The English logo exemplifies international transfer, increasing the brand’s perceived quality and social status. (Doar Hayom, August 8, 1934, p. 3).

Example 4: This ad represents the local-global identity of the newcomers by using both German and Hebrew. The use of the German language illustrates the immigrants’ strong connection to their homeland. By including two languages, the ad incorporates the values of two cultures into bicultural consumer identities. (Doar Hayom, January 4, 1936, p. 10).

International Transfer

As noted, ad agencies were set up in the 1930s mostly by new Fifth Aliyah immigrants, based on German work patterns and principles. This should be considered the earliest international transfer in Mandatory Palestine’s advertising practices. Long before globalization, numerous sectors in Palestine had already been subject to overseas economic and cultural influence. In the advertising industry, global influence was twofold, stemming from German cultural norms and professional work patterns as well as notions and techniques designed in the United States, yet combined with local German admen work habits and traditions (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The hybrid advertising industry characteristics imported by the Fifth immigration.

American advertisers were industry leaders in reaching and appealing to a wider mass public. German advertisers recognized this and were keen to embrace American advertising techniques and practices (Ross, 2007). American ad agencies opened branches in Germany, transplanting their style of advertising campaign, which contained visuals and illustrations of the product. The American style also encouraged consumer hedonism and modernity. German advertisers were inspired by American techniques, yet tended to adapt their methods to their own local cultural contexts. For example, they selectively adopted organizational forms of the American advertising agency. They seemed to lack interest in testimonials by screen personalities, and they developed an alternative model of beauty: German aesthetics embraced masculine and physical body image, whereas the United States opted for the cosmetic (Roth-Cohen & Limor, 2017). The contribution of immigrants from Germany changed the face of advertising in Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s, representing the dual effects of both well-established American and German advertising industries.

Mass Communication

The expansion of print media was an additional catalyst in the development of the advertising industry during this period. This was accompanied by gradual decline in the political party-affiliated press (Limor, 1998) and accelerated growth of private, profit-oriented, and widely circulated journalism (Caspi & Limor, 1999). Mass communication (see Model 1) is a primary force driving the structural and functional changes that swept through the advertising industry. Indeed, emerging newspaper publications offered advertisers and admen new advertising platforms as well as vast advertising spaces to increase revenue.

Technology and Economy

The impact of technology was felt on the development of advertising, especially with the arrival of cinema. This new advertising platform included outdoor cinema venues regularly featuring advertisements. Simultaneously, public transport advertising on city buses also began to take root, mainly in Tel-Aviv (Iron, 2009).

Mandatory Palestine was divided by the tension between new modes of consumption and traditional pioneering Zionist values. Economic conditions continued to thrive, improving the quality of life and transforming consumption habits. As a result, a new image of the bourgeois Jew was formed. This combined citizenship, entrepreneurship, nationalist values, and individualism in parallel to the Labor movement ideal (Roth-Cohen & Limor, 2017).

Population growth and new immigrant wealth further influenced the economic landscape of Jewish life during the Mandate. Large and small industrial plants were opening. Standards of craftsmanship were rising thanks to higher demand and the new population’s more refined needs. Finally, commercial life in the city was flourishing, with shops, cultural centers, and art institutions founded by new immigrants (Bein, 1982). Rapid urban development resulted in economic improvements creating a widespread increase in demand for products and goods. Better transportation infrastructure enabled cross-country distribution and mobilization of merchandise. Furthermore, this economic growth also led to product diversification and with it advertising opportunities to influence this new pool of consumers. These positive economic conditions increased the demand for advertising. This was strengthened by immigrant wealth and high-profile international exhibitions (1932, 1934, and 1936). These took place in Tel-Aviv, the country’s advertising hub, which also saw a new port open in 1936. Donner (1999, p. 6) argued that this increase in demand made local advertisers aware of the importance of graphics as a major marketing tool for conveying ideas and selling brands.

Discussion

Due to the striking case of Fifth Aliyah admen, the metamodel used thus far, constructed exclusively using rational-functional dimensions, should be supplemented with an additional major category based on this immigration wave—creativity. Many advertising researchers accept that creativity matters. Hartnett et al. (2016) claimed that the importance of creative execution is more impactful than message strategy. That is, how advertisers choose to convey the idea is more important than what they say. Thus, the significance of artwork in an advertising campaign is consistent with transformational advertising for low-involvement products. The transformational appeal mainly involves emotional satisfaction and stimuli by using visuals and images with no text and information.

Indeed, the admen of the German Aliyah innovated by emphasizing the visual aspect in advertisements. Images and messages were directly copied from overseas examples. Illustrations were a central component of this new visual style. These visuals were not mere decoration but made a meaningful contribution to the text. The illustrations helped the new immigrants stay connected to their homeland and provided assistance in bonding with their new country. These conflicting desires of separation and integration were captured in the Zeitgeist through visual and textual aspects of advertisements. Advertisements with emotional messages aimed at fulfilling psychological, social, and symbolic needs of the targeted audience (Loewenstein & Lerner, 2003). Importantly, they minimized the amount of information about the advertised product.

The centrality of the creative aspect is also exemplified in the reopening of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in 1935, with a graphic design department headed by Rudy Deutsch (i.e., Reuven Dayan). Deutsch-Dayan headed the department for 30 years, instilling in students the knowledge and graphic concepts he had acquired in his own studies in Germany. David Tartakover (personal communication, July, 7, 2010), a noted Israeli graphic designer and design educator, noted, “the Fifth immigration graphic designers were the creative pioneers of their time, paving the way for the next generation.”

The Yekkes who arrived with the Fifth Aliyah insisted on preserving their German culture in the new land. Indeed, the German language dominated their day-to-day lives. Until the Fifth Aliyah, all local daily papers (except the English-language Palestine Post targeting local British troops and police) were in Hebrew. With such a large influx of German speakers came an inevitable emergence of German-language newspapers.

Most of these tens of thousands of German speakers were characterized by print media consumption habits. They represented a vibrant new market for newspaper publications and advertisers alike. The latter could appeal to these immigrants in their native tongue and use familiar values and norms to encode their persuasive, consumerist messages.

Some ads used both German and Hebrew in order to create a global aura for the brand, affecting perceived product quality and brand affinity. According to Ahn and Ferle (2008), the language used for brand name and body copy influence recognition and recall of brand name and advertisement message. These immigrants possessed a local-global identity that helped them self-identify in relation to a new social environment. The use of code-switched advertisements can be attributed to international transfer (see Model 1), one of its main effects being identity transformation (Voorveld & Valkenburg, 2015). These advertisements capture the lived reality of immigrant existence, complete with the many difficulties they had to face. These primarily involved the pressure to socially integrate into a new country, not to mention the longing for all they left behind.

The German Aliyah was not a typical wave of mass immigration characterized by unskilled migrants seeking a better life than offered by their home country. In this case, these immigrants were largely well-educated bourgeoisie. The advertisements that they were met with—many designed by German immigrants—took full advantage of this fact. They used textual and visual resources to target this very specific demographic.

Another creative output of the German Aliyah can be seen in typography, especially in the development of new Hebrew fonts (Ofrat, 2015). Although connected to their German roots, these immigrants were keen to improve the “look and feel” of Hebrew letters. The paucity of Hebrew fonts forced graphic designers, all of them Fifth Aliyah immigrants, to experiment with new modernizing font design (Roth-Cohen & Limor, 2017). This too represents a hybrid influence of the Fifth Aliyah, as it connects the Hebrew and German languages in a creative work process. By integrating two languages, the advertisement incorporates the values of two cultures into the bicultural consumer identities (Examples 5 to 8).

Example 5: Pre-German Aliyah: In this ad for an insurance company, there is no visual element, only rich text (in a round font) as the main eye-catcher. (Doar Hayom, December 30, 1927, p. 3).

Example 6: Pre-German Aliyah: With no visuals, this ad uses text in a round font. All the ads in this newspaper were aggregated on the last page. (Davar, January 6, 1927, p. 4).

Example 7: This ad illustrates a new style of typography with a square Hebrew font and a carefully arranged table full of delicious products—a bourgeois class realization. (Davar, January 12, 1938, p. 3).

Example 8: In these ads, the visual element is clearly dominant. The illustrations demonstrate good life images in contrast to the hard work of the pioneers. (Doar Hayom, January 3, 1936, p. 11; Hamashkif, September 12, 1948, p. 3).

The work of native German and Western European graphic designers stood out even more with the establishment of the State of Israel. The Shamir brothers, for example, designed the new nation’s icons: from coins and stamps to the symbol of the country itself. The now widely familiar Israeli state symbol (i.e., a blue shield depicting a seven-lamp menorah surrounded by olive branches).

Conclusion

The construction and consolidation of national media spaces is an emerging domain in research on media history. With focus on the context of the nation, research on transnational communication in a globalized world may be overlooked. The case of the advertising industry in British Mandatory Palestine that was transformed by German immigrants in the Fifth Aliyah, who imported their continental expertise into a relatively untapped market, represents an early iteration of international knowledge transfer. For Israel, this had far-reaching social, cultural, economic, and technological implications. Like other modern nations, Israel is deeply influenced by advertising, a significant segment of contemporary media arena. Israel is also very much an immigrant society and has been transformed by successive waves of immigration from a variety of sources. Nevertheless, there is a lack of research on the unique and important role of the history of advertising in Israel.

This research objective was partially to contribute to knowledge of the Fifth Aliyah. But it was also to methodically and systematically investigate influences on the budding advertising industry in the Land of Israel. As noted, the contribution of immigrants from Germany changed the face of advertising in Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s. In fact, this can be said to represent one of the earliest signs of global influence on the advertising industry in the region.

This research also proposed an additional theoretical core category for analyzing factors informing the Fifth Aliyah—creativity. The theoretical project was to model structural and functional influences on the advertising industry based on Fifth Aliyah hybrid characteristics. These had a major impact on advertising creativity by implementing images and illustrations as meaningful elements in an ad—sometimes as or more important than text. These illustrations helped new immigrants stay connected to their homeland while capturing the lived reality of immigrant existence characterized by new values of hedonism and modernity. Indeed, if advertising is a language, the Yekkes developed their own dialect. By doing so, they influenced and continue to influence the Israeli advertising industry to this very day.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Osnat Roth-Cohen is a lecturer in communication and media studies at the School of Communication, Ariel University and at the School of Communication, Bar-Ilan University. She is a research fellow in the Institute for the Study of New Media, Politics and Society in Ariel University. Her research interests include the evolution of advertising, creativity in advertising, advertising in the new media age, and public relations.

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